Navigation systems in a vehicle are nowadays commonly used. These systems are more and more becoming control centers of a vehicle for driving, guiding and safety aspects, as well as entertainment aspects. Using a positioning system, most frequently a Global Positioning System (“GPS”), these systems provide precise instructions for navigating the vehicle through different road and traffic environments. The navigation system often serves as a central audio/video platform in the vehicle. Such diverse applications come along with the need for storage space or information stored on different media. For normal computers such as a PC or Laptop, external drives are often used for such purposes. These may be connected via a Universal Serial Bus (“USB”) interface. Such external drives may be storage drives, hard disks or optical drives for Blu-ray Disk (“BD”), DVD or CD. Such drives may be temporally installed in a vehicle or may be retrofitted. The external character of such drives provides for the possibility of exchanging or upgrading them in an easy way. In an automotive environment, in a vehicle, however, the USB bus is usually not able to provide all requested functionality with respect to controllability needed or requested for such a specific environment. In a vehicle, also the Media Oriented Systems Transport (“MOST”) bus may be used for connecting an external drive. However, the MOST bus is also not able to provide all requested functionality with respect to controllability needed for such an environment. This functionality may include diagnosing present states of the external drive, intervening in case a specific state of the external drive has been determined. Also, it may be requested to limit standby current per external device. Neither MOST nor USB bus would be able to provide a low standby current per external device.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved concept for external drives for a navigation system in a vehicle.